Historic First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, Mississippi, USA (founded 1837) is the largest Presbyterian congregation in the State and one of the largest in the United States. A flagship congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), First Church played a significant role in establishing the PCA (the largest conservative Presbyterian denomination in the English-speaking world), Reformed Theological Seminary, and Reformed University Ministries (a nationwide campus fellowship).

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Our young people face extraordinary sexual pressures today. And we need to be aware of how and why these pressures hit them so hard, and how to help them. Al Mohler pointed me to Emily Gordon's (of Newsday.com) interesting article on Ariel Levy's "Female Chauvinist Pigs." It is a feminist review of a feminist lament of the way the pervasive raunch culture that exists in America dehumanizes women (and the recent news story about the two Charlotte Panther Cheerleaders at a Florida Bar is just one mild example of this raunch culture and its results).

Gordon says; "One of Levy's major points is both vital and extremely well-illustrated. Adolescent girls are under tremendous pressure to adopt an image of sexual willingness and to prove it. Unlike women in their 20s or 30s, they're unlikely to have a media-savvy filter for the messages they absorb. As a result, they're in serious danger of being slandered at school and online, of sacrificing their youth to self-conscious nymphettishness, of getting pregnant and contracting STDs more often than girls in other comparable countries, and of learning too late that sex is something they should actually enjoy. Her chapter on the confusing paradoxes of contemporary urban lesbian culture will also have relevance for younger lesbians unsure of where they fit in."

Believe it or not, this is a timely, hugely important and relevant observation even for Christians rearing young women in a supposedly conservative/traditional/nominally Christian culture like Jackson, MS.

Gordon goes on to say: "On the penultimate page of the conclusion, she writes, 'Our national love of porn and pole dancing is not the byproduct of a free and easy society with an earthy acceptance of sex. It is a desperate stab at freewheeling eroticism in a time and place characterized by intense anxiety.' The complicated nature of that anxiety is worthy of a more focused look."

Yes it is. As Christian parents, we need to be saavier than we are about this phenomenon, and at the same time realize that only the Gospel can answer the anxieties that facilitate these pressures and tempatations